The Change We Need

By

Mical Abulatsia Imbukwa

“I passed through a dictatorial system while studying in Malaysia. It was that system where by a lecturer would walk to class and instead of giving students attendant sheets to sign, he/she would set up a system where by each student entering the class would enter their thump prints in the system and a database would then be created as evidence that they attended classes. After a while, the lecturer would disable the system to lock out any students who came in past the scheduled time. The database of attendance would be used during the exams and those who didn’t attend the required number of classes were locked out of the exams automatically. For assistance, they were to visit the IT department but this didn’t help much because by the time they were re-entered into the system, the exams were over. The CATs were also a misery.  A lecturer would walk to class and announce that we were having a CAT. Those who missed class automatically missed the CAT and there was nothing they could do. “As Mr. Noah narrated this, all I could do was marvel. “ Why can’t such a system be introduced here?” I shouted.

Well. We live in a society where, parents sell their cows to see their children through school but the children seem to have so much on their hands to attend classes. They only attend classes when they see it fit or rather when they hear rumors of an impending CAT. Some are always at loggerheads with lecturers for their seasonal attendance of classes and are even threatened to miss their main exams but lecturers are just humans anyway and they are also parents so they just let them seat for the exams. All they do is just deny them some marks.

Some lecturers also don’t like attending classes. Or rather, some have so many commitments they are always attending to. Commitments far much important that those students can just sit in that class and wait as they teach other students someplace else. To compensate for the missed classes, the lecturers send notes to the students’ mails, notes they got straight from Google. When they manage to attend a class, they pass around attendance sheets for students to sign for even the days they weren’t in class.

Yes! This students-lecturers tussle has to stop. Yes! This Malaysian system is incredible and someone should introduce it here so that people can be responsible. There is also a lot of slumber in the government offices and the system should be introduced so that tax payers can get value for their money. Yes! The students will riot against the system but they will adapt to it anyway. Parents too need to get value for their money. The lecturers, civil servants and parliamentarians will have no choice but to adopt to it. One can remember the resistance the analogue-digital migration faced but people adapted and now everybody is fine. Change is inevitable, change is constant.